iProject25 is 25 iPads synced together to form a huge interactive display. This was one of the most eye-catching and imaginative installations at this year’s Tokyo Designers Week.

So why 25 iPads? The design was commissioned by the Environmental Ministry of Japan as was a part of their “Challenge 25″ event to mark 25th anniversary of Tokyo Designers week, fitting isn’t it?. They wanted art that brought awareness to various global environmental problems. And they got this …

The creators, given their musical backgrounds, designed iProject25 with inspiration from the art of DJing. The concept behind the installation is this; the movie starts in perfect sync, all video on the 25 iPads work together to form one complete image with the same music. The audience then has a chance to manipulate to videos on the individual iPads. They can change the speed of both the sound and video, the screen brightness and also the melody being played by the device. Each person is a DJ able to mix the parameters to their liking, so the entire display quickly becomes a mess of inter lapping sounds and out of sync video. This is a metaphor for how us human beings affect the world around us, manipulating our environment and destroying harmony in nature. The challenge was for the audience to work together to get the video back to its original state, back to a more harmonious earth.

iProject25 is the brainchild of Taq , a music composer (famous for his work on Komani’s BeatMania) and his childhood friend Simon Mayer,  head of German design company Visual Catering. The two have long collaborated on design projects with Simon taking care of the visuals and Taq the music. The idea came from their DJing gigs together back in the day. For this project they enlisted the help of programmer Mui Iwase to write the App that used blue tooth to sync the iPads wirelessly and control the time delay on each device.

Here is a bit more on how the iPads communicate and the user experience.

These iPads ran an older version of the app

They believe that this setup would be an great promotional tool for companies as it could used to display large videos/images but give many viewers the opportunity to interact with installation at the same time.

Dayne Barton

View all posts by Dayne Barton
Daynes website